Progressive pulmonary hypertension in cyanotic congenital heart disease with severe pulmonary stenosis

We report the progressive development of pulmonary hypertension despite the presence of severe pulmonary stenosis in three patients with cyanotic congenital heart disease. The associated intracardiac lesions were complete transposition with a ventricular septal defect, double outlet right ventricle, and a heart with univentricular atrioventricular connection, respectively. Serial measurements on hemodynamics andhistological findings documented the progression of pulmonary hypertension and pulmonary vascular diseases. The underlying etiology remains speculative. In view of the possibility of development of pulmonary hypertension despite a 'protected' pulmonary vasculature, corrective surgery should be contemplated as soon as technically feasible. © World Publishers Incorporated.published_or_final_versio

Laser-Stimulated Fluorescence in Paleontology

Fluorescence using ultraviolet (UV) light has seen increased use as a tool in paleontology over the last decade. Laser-stimulated fluorescence (LSF) is a next generation technique that is emerging as a way to fluoresce paleontological specimens that remain dark under typical UV. A laser’s ability to concentrate very high flux rates both at the macroscopic and microscopic levels results in specimens fluorescing in ways a standard UV bulb cannot induce. Presented here are five paleontological case histories that illustrate the technique across a broad range of specimens and scales. Novel uses such as back-lighting opaque specimens to reveal detail and detection of specimens completely obscured by matrix are highlighted in these examples. The recent cost reductions in medium-power short wavelength lasers and use of standard photographic filters has now made this technique widely accessible to researchers. This technology has the potential to automate multiple aspects of paleontology, including preparation and sorting of microfossils. This represents a highly cost-effective way to address paleontology's preparatory bottleneck.published_or_final_versio

Organizational factors and safety: The mediation effects of organizational processes

The research of safety related organizational factors is hampered for two reasons: 1, accident retrospect analysis is always single-direction, it is hard to make conclusion what is the effect of some organizational factors even some accident analysis find they are safety related. 2, latent failure, as a core concept in the field of organizational safety, still has not been studied at the level of detailed description. In this study, we use organizational process analysis to show the relationship between organizational factors and safety. Results from 391 employees’ questionnaire investigation show that organization processes are the mediate between the organizational factors and safety. Latent failure,  which comes from some negative characteristics of organizational factors, could be represented by the negative condition of organizational processes

Disparities and risks of sexually transmissible infections among men who have sex with men in China: a meta-analysis and data synthesis.

BACKGROUND: Sexually transmitted infections (STIs), including Hepatitis B and C virus, are emerging public health risks in China, especially among men who have sex with men (MSM). This study aims to assess the magnitude and risks of STIs among Chinese MSM. METHODS: Chinese and English peer-reviewed articles were searched in five electronic databases from January 2000 to February 2013. Pooled prevalence estimates for each STI infection were calculated using meta-analysis. Infection risks of STIs in MSM, HIV-positive MSM and male sex workers (MSW) were obtained. This review followed the PRISMA guidelines and was registered in PROSPERO. RESULTS: Eighty-eight articles (11 in English and 77 in Chinese) investigating 35,203 MSM in 28 provinces were included in this review. The prevalence levels of STIs among MSM were 6.3% (95% CI: 3.5-11.0%) for chlamydia, 1.5% (0.7-2.9%) for genital wart, 1.9% (1.3-2.7%) for gonorrhoea, 8.9% (7.8-10.2%) for hepatitis B (HBV), 1.2% (1.0-1.6%) for hepatitis C (HCV), 66.3% (57.4-74.1%) for human papillomavirus (HPV), 10.6% (6.2-17.6%) for herpes simplex virus (HSV-2) and 4.3% (3.2-5.8%) for Ureaplasma urealyticum. HIV-positive MSM have consistently higher odds of all these infections than the broader MSM population. As a subgroup of MSM, MSW were 2.5 (1.4-4.7), 5.7 (2.7-12.3), and 2.2 (1.4-3.7) times more likely to be infected with chlamydia, gonorrhoea and HCV than the broader MSM population, respectively. CONCLUSION: Prevalence levels of STIs among MSW were significantly higher than the broader MSM population. Co-infection of HIV and STIs were prevalent among Chinese MSM. Integration of HIV and STIs healthcare and surveillance systems is essential in providing effective HIV/STIs preventive measures and treatments. TRIAL REGISTRATION: PROSPERO NO: CRD42013003721

Brownian bridges to submanifolds

We introduce and study Brownian bridges to submanifolds. Our method involves proving a general formula for the integral over a submanifold of the minimal heat kernel on a complete Riemannian manifold. We use the formula to derive lower bounds, an asymptotic relation and derivative estimates. We also see a connection to hypersurface local time. This work is motivated by the desire to extend the analysis of path and loop spaces to measures on paths which terminate on a submanifold

Temporal Model Adaptation for Person Re-Identification

Person re-identification is an open and challenging problem in computer vision. Majority of the efforts have been spent either to design the best feature representation or to learn the optimal matching metric. Most approaches have neglected the problem of adapting the selected features or the learned model over time. To address such a problem, we propose a temporal model adaptation scheme with human in the loop. We first introduce a similarity-dissimilarity learning method which can be trained in an incremental fashion by means of a stochastic alternating directions methods of multipliers optimization procedure. Then, to achieve temporal adaptation with limited human effort, we exploit a graph-based approach to present the user only the most informative probe-gallery matches that should be used to update the model. Results on three datasets have shown that our approach performs on par or even better than state-of-the-art approaches while reducing the manual pairwise labeling effort by about 80%

The consequences of a new software package for the quantification of gated-SPECT myocardial perfusion studies

Semiquantitative analysis of myocardial perfusion scintigraphy (MPS) has reduced inter- and intraobserver variability, and enables researchers to compare parameters in the same patient over time, or between groups of patients. There are several software packages available that are designed to process MPS data and quantify parameters. In this study the performances of two systems, quantitative gated SPECT (QGS) and 4D-MSPECT, in the processing of clinical patient data and phantom data were compared. The clinical MPS data of 148 consecutive patients were analysed using QGS and 4D-MSPECT to determine the end-diastolic volume, end-systolic volume and left ventricular ejection fraction. Patients were divided into groups based on gender, body mass index, heart size, stressor type and defect type. The AGATE dynamic heart phantom was used to provide reference values for the left ventricular ejection fraction. Although the correlations were excellent (correlation coefficients 0.886 to 0.980) for all parameters, significant differences (p < 0.001) were found between the systems. Bland-Altman plots indicated that 4D-MSPECT provided overall higher values of all parameters than QGS. These differences between the systems were not significant in patients with a small heart (end-diastolic volume < 70 ml). Other clinical factors had no direct influence on the relationship. Additionally, the phantom data indicated good linear responses of both systems. The discrepancies between these software packages were clinically relevant, and influenced by heart size. The possibility of such discrepancies should be taken into account when a new quantitative software system is introduced, or when multiple software systems are used in the same institution.Vascular Biology and Interventio

Human melanomas and ovarian cancers overexpressing mechanical barrier molecule genes lack immune signatures and have increased patient mortality risk.

We have identified eight genes whose expression in human melanoma metastases and ovarian cancers is associated with a lack of Th1 immune signatures. They encode molecules with mechanical barrier function in the skin and other normal tissues and include filaggrin (FLG), tumor-associated calcium signal transducer 2 (TACSTD2), and six desmosomal proteins (DST, DSC3, DSP, PPL, PKP3, and JUP). This association has been validated in an independent series of 114 melanoma metastases. In these, DST expression alone is sufficient to identify melanomas without immune signatures, while FLG and the other six putative barrier molecules are overexpressed in a different subset of melanomas lacking immune signatures. Similar associations have been identified in a set of 186 ovarian cancers. RNA-seq data from 471 melanomas and 307 ovarian cancers in the TCGA database further support these findings and also reveal that overexpression of barrier molecules is strongly associated with early patient mortality for melanoma (p = 0.0002) and for ovarian cancer (p &lt; 0.01). Interestingly, this association persists for FLG for melanoma (p = 0.012) and ovarian cancer (p = 0.006), whereas DST overexpression is negatively associated with CD8(+) gene expression, but not with patient survival. Thus, overexpression of FLG or DST identifies two distinct patient populations with low immune cell infiltration in these cancers, but with different prognostic implications for each. These data raise the possibility that molecules with mechanical barrier function in skin and other tissues may be used by cancer cells to protect them from immune cell infiltration and immune-mediated destruction